BE IT ENACTED by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:-

Dissolution of Parliament after four years.

1. - (1) Excepting only where a dissolution has taken place under sections 2 or 3 below, a Parliament shall stand dissolved on the date twenty-eight days before the fourth anniversary of the date of the general election at which the members of the House of Commons in that Parliament were elected.

(2) The Septennial Act 1715 is hereby repealed.

Dissolution of Parliament following no confidence resolution.

2. - (1) Whenever the House of Commons has by resolution expressed no confidence in Her Majesty's Government, Parliament shall stand dissolved on the seventh day following the date of the resolution.

(2) Whenever the House of Commons has by resolution expressed no confidence in the Prime Minister, and has not, within twenty-eight days of that date, expressed confidence in the same or another Prime Minister, Parliament shall stand dissolved.

Dissolution of a Parliament summoned following a dissolution under section 2.

3. - (1) Where a Parliament has been dissolved under section 2, then-

(a) if the date of that dissolution was more than six months from the date on which that Parliament would anyway have stood dissolved (the "section 1 date"), the new Parliament summoned following that dissolution shall itself stand dissolved on the section 1 date, and

(b) if the date of that dissolution was within six months of the section 1 date, the new Parliament summoned following that dissolution shall stand dissolved on the fourth anniversary of the section 1 date.

(2) Subsection (1) does not apply where the new Parliament is itself dissolved earlier under section 2.